The insert I have has a fan and we use it a lot. It seems to work OK without the fan, especially if it is not too cold out. YMMV
Not knocking inserts here, some situations require them. I been around a few and I think it’s like apples and oranges comparing them to a free standing stove. If it were me I’d install a free standing and keep the fireplace for “ambiance”. Nights with the wife, holidays when the house is packed and the stove is too much kinda thing.
That depends somewhat on the fireplace being on an interior vs exterior wall. What's behind it? My fireplace is on an exterior wall and my insert benefits greatly from the blower. My neighbor's fireplace is in the middle of the house and they don't even have a blower on their insert. Heat lost from the back of my fireplace goes outside. Heat from the back of my neighbor's fireplace goes to their kitchen.
I have a friend with an insert and the fan is a big part of getting more than the living room warm. She ended up having to get a generator after she experienced her first outage because just running the insert without a fan just kept the livingroom warm. That is the extent of my knowledge on inserts. Not that a generator wouldn't be great just in principal for power outages, but her intent when installing the wood burning insert instead of a pellet stove insert was to be able to heat without power when needed. That didn't quite work out the way she had hoped.
I think the back of mine is the bathroom. I have not moved in yet, April 8th is closing day. I took another look when I was just up there, and I do think I could rip out the fire place. I may have a structural engineer come up and take a look. I am leaning towards keeping it for the ambiance though, I like the idea of having a fire going when guests are over, and having the central wood burner for the real heat. Keep in mind, we do have the pellet stove in the basement that I imagine may end up doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I have not ever used a pellet stove, but I am liking the though of not waking up in the middle of the night to put wood into the heating device.
This is a big consideration also, and why I may go remotely installed wood stove. When the power goes out, I lose the boiler, the pellet stove, and the insert blower if we go that route.
I think you have me sold on this idea. I have already imagined the Christmas fire and stockings on the mantle. I would like a centrally mounted stove for when we get snowed in and have to go days without power, and can not get to the gasoline station.
Yes they do hear better with a blower but if you have a generator that's no issues. A simple inverter on a 12v automotive battery will run quite a while off you need it. While an insert stress great better with a blower, there's a lot of times that we actually shut the blower off, in shoulder season. The insert itself will put a good amount of heat out. A free standing stove will heat better , but when you put one in/ in front of a FP they are never as appealing as an insert, visually. A nice insert is basically as nice to look at as an open fP. However, the insert will actually add heat to the house.
Will the new stove only be responsible for heating part of the 2400sf? I'd stuff a non-flush insert in there with a liner. You'll get the heat and the ambiance in one unit.
